Video Games are one of the few media mediums (apart from maybe books) that will grant you great satisfaction in completing them. In particular when you beat that ‘really difficult level’, that ‘impossible achievement’ or even just to finish that old SNES title that you never did all those years ago. Achieving such feats in ones video games can bring a delightful amount of satisfaction indeed.

Here I am going to run through with you readers some of my personal favourite delightfully fun games that I had the pleasure of completing to enjoy a beautiful ending thanking me for my efforts, to the more jaw-wrenching, controller throwing, physically and mentally testing challenges in my many years of a gamer.

10. 100% Completion of Super Mario World - Without a doubt one of the more ‘I didn’t realize how much I played this game’ accomplishments. I played this game even when I got my more modern Nintendo 64 and Playstation, it really was that addictive. Having being my first game I may have had a soft spot for it, however even going back to it now, I can still appreciate the beauty of Nintendo back in their day where they created truly amazing games. Without a doubt the greatest platformer in existence today and will be for all time.

9. Beating Call of Duty World at War on Veteran – Anyone who has the paitence for this feat deserves a fair amount of applause (even though I have done it myself). Mind numbingly difficult, between your useless AI allies, and the tendencies for grenades to be magnetically attracted to your position if you sit longer than 10 seconds at any given spots and add in the fact that enemies shoot out of the side of their arse as well as their guns leaves a foul taste (and even fouler language) in many a gamers mouth.

8. Beating Soul Reaver – One of the more under appreciated games of the Sony Playstation era, Soul Reaver required more puzzle solving and good orientation skills rather than brute force. Parts of this game left me confused to no end with its puzzles, easy to get lost landscape and a boss battle that required you to play cat and mouse until said boss dies a fiery death orchestrated by yours truly. Having given it a 3-year break back when I was 12 I decided, lets finish this little gem. Finish I did too, and enjoyed a delightful ending to a beautiful game. The funniest thing of it all is, I recently played it all over again, only to find myself stuck and to this day, I still can’t finish it…

7. Getting NAT settings to work on Xbox Live – Sounds ridiculous I know, but since this is related to games, I want to stress how annoying this was to my multiplayer experience. Running through possibly every suggestion of googles when looking for ‘change NAT settings for Xbox Live’ I found myself completely dumbfounded on how to rectify the aggravating situation. Then one day out of the blue, after playing around with a couple of suggestions from the web and fellow XBL users, it finally opened. Needless to say, I was one happy (and free) bloke.

6. Getting my 100th win achievement for Mortal Kombat on Xbox Live – Once again another Xbox related achievement, this one proving to be extremely difficult due to the spamming of the robot Smoke character. Getting beaten over and over again by the same move proved to be quite costly in precious free time and my mental state of mind. Only by going on a marathon on 36 wins and a zillion losses (having played on and off previously), I got it. Some naughty words were said in appreciation for that elusive 30 gamerscore.

5. Beating Rome Total War campaign on the hardest setting – Rome Total War is probably the best RTS I have ever played, probably because it is the only RTS I have played to death. RTS’s are strangely difficult to get used to, and it’s not surprising that many find them too hard to enjoy. Rome Total War is hard enough on its own, add in the hardest difficulty and now you’re asking for real pain. Despite having many months experience in the campaign and playing many single battles on the said difficulty, This campaign eluded me on several tries, until eventually… just eventually I did it. It required a lot of sacrifice of men, and ships but Rome finally fell beneath me…never again.

4. Completing Super Mario Bros 3 – In the last 2 worlds (7+8), this game gave me a run for my money. With its seemingly impossible levels which required ninja skills that would make Jackie Chan proud (you’ve heard it first here people, he really is a ninja), and the flying boat levels…the pain, the agony, so many cannonballs flying everywhere and with a scrolling screen that kept pushing you towards your impending death. The eventual battle with King Koopa (which had some amazing music) and completion allowed me to sigh with heavy relief in completing such a monumental game.

3. Completing Ocarina of Time for N64 – That’s right, a worthy place for the best game of all time. I say this in an attempt to share with you all my opinion on such an amazing game that was honestly…perfect. Call me glassy-eyed if you wish but this game was the definition of an amazing game and has been touted as such on many an occasion. It wasn’t really that this game was hard that I felt the need to call it an accomplishment, but more of the fact that I felt so privileged to be in contact with such a brilliant game and to have completed it.

2. Beating Mile High Club on Veteran on COD 4 MW – This hardly even needs explaining as anyone who has play Call of Duty 4 and has tried this on Veteran will know how ridiculously hard this task is. It’s just beyond belief how I did do this to be honest, with just one minute to get from one end of a plane to an upstairs department, going back again and rescue a hostage while dealing with several enemies in a claustrophobic airplane really requires some serious skills and a bucket load of patience. Spending nearly 2 hours on just this was really physiologically damaging for me I believe. It may even affect me now…

1. Seriously…the achievement – Never before have I ever screamed as much as I did when I saw that 50 GS achievement symbol pop up on my television screen not only ten months ago to this day (that’s scary). Having played the multiplayer to death, and I really mean to death (of the disc, I’m now on my third), I was beyond disillusioned when I calculated my scores every so often to find I had hit 10,000 and over and no achievement. Google searches, videos on Youtube, forum inquires and still no proper explanation as to why this injustice stood. Until one day…that fateful night playing it online casually as I was at that time (having given up the idea of ever getting the achievement but played anyway due to enjoyment) in a ranked match looking at the end of match details when I heard and seen the most beautiful thing in the world (at that time). ” 50G Seriously…” My eyes bulged, and I screamed at the top of my lungs and fell to my knees in front of the television (whilst in a party chat mind you, so you can imagine their thoughts on my physiological state of mind). After around 5 minutes of screaming un-interruptible moans and sounds it finally sunk in. In which case I was rewarded with a good scolding by my fellow house inhabitants about being too loud. Do you really think I cared…?

Anyways, that does it for now. Please leave a comment letting us know your greatest accomplishments in gaming.